Welcome to The Global Citizen Journal Online. Embrace the service journey — in the field, during transition, and beyond —by integrating "service as a way of life."

The Global Citizen Journal contains• Valuable lessons for serving well and nurturing a life of service leadership• Stories of service and faith by volunteers and veteran global citizens• Dialogue questions for training and debriefing (Special Edition only)

Consider using the Global Citizen Journal for service volunteers as part of your curriculum.

Introduction From The Editor

The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship celebrates its tenth year with this Special Edition of The Global Citizen: A Journal for Young Adults Engaging the World through Service. The editorial team invited Krista Colleagues, other service volunteers, and friends of the Foundation to submit suggestions for articles--either previously published in The Global Citizen or elsewhere--that they found contributed significantly to their learning about serving others well and nurturing an active life of global citizenship. We also solicited original articles from authors uniquely qualified to respond to contemporary concerns about the impact of service on the volunteer and on the community being served. Each article reflects candidly on the challenges and hardships that exist in the world today while simultaneously modeling ways to move gracefully through this world. This movement, we've found, can be likened to a dance: a dance of grief, a dance of wry humor, a dance of joy.

Introduction From The Editor

In this, our fourth edition of The Global Citizen, we have arranged a collection of essays from young service volunteers who have learned rich lessons in the field school of service and global citizenship. We know that an essay is no substitute for personal experience and that many of these lessons can only be truly learned the hard way. So consider this a sort of companion reader for the curriculum of experience as a service volunteer and life as a global citizen.

Introduction From The Editor

In an effort to explore the nature of this [service] ethic, we have arranged this issue of The Global Citizen around the metaphor of a table. Tables, be they the tables of our childhood or those of our adult lives, are by their very nature places where we gain our values. Thus, in the first article, “Come to the Table: Five Values for the Global Citizen,” I have invited you to explore the nature of this ethic at each of five tables. The values set out at these tables – mutuality, influence, competence, humility, and celebration – are neither a complete nor settled set. One might question why I chose mutuality over sacrifice, community or wonder; or perhaps why hope or change were left out. By sustaining a metaphor of invitation to this series of five tables, I hope to leave space for such questions, indeed space for other tables where this ethic might be further shaped.

Introduction From The Editor

If travel and service are important to the development of leaders who engage society with a sense of civic responsibility, and this in turn helps to build the social capital required for healthy democratic governance and for societies to function well, then the Krista Foundation is doing very well to support young adults who commit themselves to significant periods of travel and service. This edition of the Global Citizen contains eight articles written by “Krista Colleagues” – service volunteers who have received support from the foundation. Their topics range widely, but each article provides a window into the transformative process of which Dr. Hunt writes. Each author grapples with a unique set of issues brought to the surface as they served others in a new place.

Introduction From The Editor

The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship has sponsored the creation of The Global Citizen to provide a place for an intergenerational exploration of these questions. In particular, we hope to gather together and share specific experiences and reflections from those who are engaging global issues like poverty, race/culture/gender friction, and environmental stress. The majority of our contributors are young Christian activists who have chosen a path of service for the love and hope of humanity and the planet. "Veteran" global citizens, who model ways for living a lifelong ethic of service, have been invited to contribute their experience and wisdom as well.